[WorldMaker]

Similar to the "users request crazy stuff", managers of users request crazy stuff based on what they think their users need. Stuff that goes up and down two very different reporting chains (up the users' then back down yours) is almost always going to be some weird telephone game crazily divorced from reality.

"How is the user actually using this software?" is sometimes a weirdly hard question to answer correctly in reporting chains.

Then when those reporting chains get siloed due to budgets and in-fighting and over-complicated "change management procedures" (due to often over-zealous risk aversion, maybe to avoid losing budgets), it's far too easy to find yourself not developing for the actual users but for some ideal "manager-user" that doesn't actually use the app day-to-day (or maybe even at all) and instead believes the map is the territory. (Those that think the issue tracker about the app is the status of the usage of the app, or worse that PowerPoint screenshot demos of the app are all that matters and tells them everything about how the app functions.)